36. CIA Mind Control: Fighting Communism with LSD (Ep 2)

Summary

The Rest Is Classified: Episode 36 – CIA Mind Control: Fighting Communism with LSD (Ep 2)
Release Date: April 8, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 36 of The Rest Is Classified, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera delve deep into the clandestine world of the CIA's mind control experiments during the Cold War. Titled "CIA Mind Control: Fighting Communism with LSD (Ep 2)," this episode explores the origins, execution, and ramifications of the MKULTRA program, with a particular focus on Sidney Gottlieb, the program's mastermind.

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The Genesis of MKULTRA

[03:11] Gordon Corera:
Gordon introduces Sidney Gottlieb, a former CIA analyst whose obsession with mind control was fueled by fears that the Soviets had cracked the code to manipulating human consciousness. This belief led the CIA to commission Gottlieb to spearhead experiments aimed at controlling and reprogramming the human mind.

Key Points:

• Historical Context: Post-World War II era marked by intense rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
• Program Origins: Building upon earlier Nazi and Japanese experiments with mind-altering substances.
• Primary Objective: Develop methods for interrogation, brainwashing, and psychological manipulation.

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The Pursuit of Psychedelic Potentials

[04:22] David McCloskey:
David elaborates on Gottlieb's quest to find a "truth serum" that could force individuals to reveal information without coercion or torture. Gottlieb saw psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, as a promising avenue for achieving this control.

Notable Quote:
“He is looking for a way into the mind, a way to… condition it, and a way then to fill it… with intention or desire, the ability to act that is in line with the purposes of the CIA.”
—David McCloskey [04:24]

Key Points:

• Drug Trials: Experiments with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, mescaline, and ultimately LSD.
• Methodologies: Administering drugs to CIA personnel and unwitting subjects to observe behavioral changes.
• Findings: Most drugs proved unreliable for consistent mind control, but LSD showed intriguing potential despite unpredictable effects.

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LSD: The Star of MKULTRA

[10:00] David McCloskey:
David transitions to LSD, highlighting its allure for the CIA. LSD's potency meant that even minute doses could significantly alter perception and behavior, making it an attractive tool for covert operations.

Notable Quote:
“Because of this power, the first thing you do is you start testing it on your friends and colleagues…”
—David McCloskey [16:06]

Key Points:

• Discovery and Acquisition: LSD was synthesized in Switzerland in 1943 by Dr. Albert Hoffman. The CIA acquired LSD from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, albeit initially misunderstanding the quantity available.
• Implementation: Gottlieb personally experimented with LSD, even consuming it over 200 times to understand its effects.
• Ethical Breaches: Administering LSD to CIA trainees without their knowledge, leading to severe psychological distress among some agents.

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The Expansion of MKULTRA

[25:27] David McCloskey:
With MKULTRA formally established and funded, Gottlieb faced significant challenges, including maintaining secrecy and sourcing sufficient LSD. To address these, he outsourced experiments to academic and medical institutions, often without informed consent from participants.

Key Points:

• Subprojects: MKULTRA encompassed numerous subprojects exploring various aspects of mind control, such as hypnosis and the integration of magic and illusion techniques.
• Collaborations: Partnerships with universities, psychiatric institutes, and even stage magicians to diversify research approaches.
• Human Subjects: Vulnerable populations, including inmates and mental health patients, were exploited as unwitting test subjects, leading to long-term psychological damage and fatalities.

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Ethical Implications and Aftermath

[47:04] Gordon Corera:
Gordon questions Gottlieb's ethical stance, considering the heinous nature of the experiments. Despite the moral quagmire, CIA leadership, including Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, remained staunchly supportive of MKULTRA, prioritizing national security fears over ethical considerations.

Notable Quote:
“It seems pretty clear even early on that it's not a particularly reliable truth serum.”
—David McCloskey [05:55]

Key Points:

• Disregard for Consent: Many experiments were conducted without the knowledge or consent of participants, violating basic ethical standards.
• Psychological Toll: Subjects experienced lasting trauma, with some cases leading to permanent mental health issues or death.
• Program Continuation: Despite mounting evidence of harm and inefficacy, MKULTRA received continued funding and expansion due to Cold War anxieties.

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Darker Facets of MKULTRA

[44:23] David McCloskey:
David recounts some of the most disturbing experiments under MKULTRA, including the injection of LSD into elephants and the exploitation of inmates at the Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky.

Notable Quote:
“The CIA, unbeknownst to the zoo, the zoo doesn't know where the money is coming from…”
—David McCloskey [44:46]

Key Points:

• Tusko the Elephant: An experiment where an elephant was injected with an excessive dose of LSD, leading to its death, underscoring the program's reckless disregard for life.
• Addiction Research Center: Inmates were subjected to prolonged LSD dosing without consent, resulting in severe psychological damage and fatalities.
• Notorious Figures: Individuals like Whitey Bulger were entangled in the program, experiencing traumatic consequences that affected their lives deeply.

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Conclusion and Reflection

[48:38] David McCloskey:
David reflects on Gottlieb's ability to compartmentalize his gruesome work with LSD experiments and maintain a semblance of normalcy in his personal life. This dichotomy highlights the pervasive moral blind spots within intelligence operations driven by paranoia and fear.

Key Points:

• Compartmentalization: Gottlieb managed to separate his professional endeavors from his personal life, avoiding overt scrutiny during his tenure.
• Legacy of MKULTRA: The program left an indelible mark on countless individuals and remains a dark chapter in CIA history, raising enduring questions about ethical boundaries in intelligence work.
• Future Implications: The episode sets the stage for exploring even darker aspects of MKULTRA in subsequent installments, hinting at the depths of deception and manipulation employed by the CIA.

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Notable Moments and Quotes

• Gottlieb’s Personal Use of LSD:
  “...he uses it himself later he says he used it more than 200 times.” [14:21]

• Impact on Individuals:
  “He was given LSD every day for 15 months and ends up mentally damaged…” [43:28]

• MKULTRA’s Scope and Secrecy:
  “Each subproject was aimed at a different avenue into the human psyche.” [36:45]

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Final Thoughts

Episode 36 of The Rest Is Classified provides a chilling insight into the CIA's MKULTRA program, underscoring the lengths to which intelligence agencies will go in the name of national security. Through meticulous research and compelling narratives, McCloskey and Corera shed light on the ethical breaches and human tragedies intertwined with the quest for mind control, offering listeners a sobering reflection on the misuse of science and power.

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Stay tuned for the next episode, where the hosts promise to uncover even darker aspects of MKULTRA, including personal accounts of individuals who suffered under the program's experiments.

Transcript

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[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

Within the agency, Dr. Gottlieb found time to lead the chemists of the technical services staff on a series of increasingly daring experiments with lsd. They spiked each other's coffee and liquor. They spread it on their food. They tripped out. In their offices and in safe houses in Washington and beyond. In the Maryland countryside, they were stoned for days at a time.

[Unknown]

There were moments of black comedy.

[Gordon Carrera]

A hallucinating scientist suddenly decided that he was Fred Astaire and grabbed the nearest secretary, convinced she was Ginger Rogers. Dr. Gottlieb regarded such incidents as the usual hiccups in searching for the magic technique. He was convinced the Communists were using his sixth sense, convinced Dr. Gottlieb that there might be no quick answers. The only certain way to arrive at the one which mattered Success was was to continue experimenting. He encouraged his staff to go in search of how to take possession of a man's mind. Watching his colleagues expanding their conception of reality under the influence of lsd, he would sometimes dance a jig. Those were among some of his happiest hours at the agency, equalled only by rising at dawn to milk his goats.

[Unknown]

Well, welcome to the Rest is classified.

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And that was Stephen Kintzer writing about Sidney Gottlieb, the master of the MKULTRA program in Stephen Kitzner book Poisoner in Chief. And last time we were looking at the character of Sidney Gottlieb and also the origins of this quest for controlling the human mind, which had come first out of some of the Nazi and Japanese experiments in the Second World War and then particularly that era in the early Cold War. When the US and the CIA in particular became obsessed that the Soviets might have found some secret to controlling the mind and to dealing with issues of interrogation and brainwashing.

[Unknown]

And so the CIA were trying to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Master it themselves and the man they turned to was Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

Well, it made me think, as you.

[David McCloskey]

Were reading that, Gordon, at just how.

[Unknown]

Restrictive the agency's drug policy had become.

[David McCloskey]

By the time I joined, because they had cut all this out, I joined at the wrong time, Gordon, what can I say? And we are now picking up this story focused on Sidney Gottlieb at a point where the CIA, as we mentioned in the last episode, had spent some time, some of it under Gottlieb's direction, running programs called Bluebird and Artichoke to try to understand if there were ways, oftentimes using really brutal methods of coercion, torture, to elicit the truth from prisoners. And Gottlieb is really looking for, as he's in this sort of quest for mind control, he's looking for a path into the human psyche, right? I mean, he is looking for a way into the mind, a way to.

[Unknown]

Wipe the mind, I guess you could.

[David McCloskey]

Say, or to condition it, and a way then to fill it, I guess, with intention or desire, the ability to act that is in line with the purposes of the CIA, right? So he is looking for a way to control people. And drugs become a very fascinating pathway for Gottlieb into the human mind.

[Unknown]

So he's really after something that will.

[David McCloskey]

Aid in the process of almost a mental reprogramming. And a lot of the drug oriented.

[Unknown]

Experiments in this era really do resemble.

[David McCloskey]

Kind of the pathway of a wayward.

[Unknown]

Teenager going deeper and deeper into harder and harder drugs.

[David McCloskey]

So the CIA has experimented with marijuana, refining it into a potent liquid without.

[Unknown]

Color, taste or odor.

[David McCloskey]

They call it TD for Truth Drug. They test it, of course, as you read in that, in that insanely bizarre quote to start the episode, LSD was being used around the office. CIA officers were testing marijuana on themselves, consuming varying doses.

[Unknown]

They'd mix it into candy, salad dressing.

[David McCloskey]

Mashed potatoes, smoked it. Of course, the research led them to what now, I guess seem to be blindingly obvious conclusions. Things like, quote, the active ingredient in.

[Unknown]

Marijuana brings on a state of irresponsibility.

[David McCloskey]

Appears to relax all inhibitions, and the.

[Unknown]

Sense of humor is accentuated to the point where any statement or situation can become extremely funny.

[David McCloskey]

So there we go. A top secret review of marijuana published by the Central Intelligence Agency determines that it's not going to be A very useful drug for mind control.

[Gordon Carrera]

Sounds like that could have been written by a teenager.

[David McCloskey]

But anyway, it could have been written by a teenager. That's right. Next up on this sort of downward spiral, cocaine. The CIA sponsored experiments in which mental patients were given cocaine in various forms, including injection. Early reports said that cocaine could produce elation and talkativeness, but they kind of come to the conclusion that it could.

[Unknown]

Induce free and spontaneous speech.

[David McCloskey]

It's too unreliable. The agency is kind of excited about this at the beginning, but then sours on it and believes that it's just.

[Unknown]

Too unreliable for use in any kind of interrogation.

[David McCloskey]

So then we go to heroin. Of course, I will say, as the drugs get a little harder here, there seems to be less evidence that the CIA officers were using it on themselves. Memos noted that heroin could be useful.

[Unknown]

In reverse because essentially you could get.

[David McCloskey]

Someone addicted to it and then dangle it over them and, you know, basically say, you're going to tell us these things, otherwise you won't get another hit. The US Navy had actually sponsored secret research to study heroin's effects, and students were paid $1 per hour to ingest measured doses while their reactions were observed.

[Unknown]

Heroin, of course, proves to be no.

[David McCloskey]

More of a wonder drug for getting.

[Unknown]

Into the human mind and controlling it than cocaine did. So of course, we go on to mescaline the Germans.

[David McCloskey]

You know, we talked about this kind of pretty seedy nexus of a lot.

[Unknown]

Of the research that had come out.

[David McCloskey]

Of the Nazi concentration camps and the.

[Unknown]

U.S. biowarfare Program to begin. And some of the German scientists at.

[David McCloskey]

Dietrich were actually questioned because mescaline had been given a prisoners at Dachau, but the work had been inconclusive.

[Unknown]

And mescaline, like all the others, have deemed to be almost too unpredictable to be useful as a mind control agent.

[David McCloskey]

So then we, of course, we go to.

[Unknown]

We go to shrooms.

[David McCloskey]

Gordon. A CIA officer is sent to Mexico to collect seeds, plants, herbs or fungus with high narcotic or toxic value.

[Unknown]

What a top secret mission to be dispatched on. Go collect some herbs in Mexico, wander.

[David McCloskey]

Mexico for fungus with psilocybin in it.

[Unknown]

This officer spent several weeks in Mexico.

[David McCloskey]

Which I'm sure were quite productive, returns with bags full of samples and with something else. He had met with people who told.

[Unknown]

Him tales of a magic mushroom.

[David McCloskey]

Native shamans and priestesses, the sort of.

[Unknown]

Source said had used it as a.

[David McCloskey]

Pathway to the divine. And they called it God's flesh.

[Unknown]

And Gottlieb has the samples analyzed and was told that several did indeed contain psychoactive substances. And so he finds a chemist that.

[David McCloskey]

He can send to Mexico to find organic toxins and, if possible, this magic mushroom. So he gets a chemist through an outside firm. The chemist links up with a married couple who'd participated in mushroom rituals in Mexico and who, as Kinsner writes, was.

[Unknown]

Known as a guardian of ancient wisdom who used mushrooms to commune with the infinite.

[David McCloskey]

The chemist goes down there, apparently doesn't get along well with the married couple, apparently also has a very bad trip.

[Unknown]

On the mushrooms, but returns with samples. And so Gottlieb actually ends up sending people to Pennsylvania to visit with mushroom.

[David McCloskey]

Growers to see if they could help reproduce this and create, I guess, a fungus to defeat communism.

[Unknown]

I once had some tequila with a worm in it, which I think may have had similar effects, but I'm not sure if that was supposed to be.

[Gordon Carrera]

True or if it was just the tequila.

[David McCloskey]

But anyway, and we said in the other episode, I mean, Gordon and I, we've tried all of this, right? So we've done the first research to get to this point. And as we tick through this list.

[Unknown]

We can attest, to be clear, that's not true. Before I get denied a visa to travel to anywhere in the future, we.

[David McCloskey]

Can attest none of this stuff works. And so, again, drugs kind of seem to be hitting a bit of a wall.

[Unknown]

All of this is very interesting.

[David McCloskey]

And again, I think we should mention that Sidney Gottlieb is an infinitely curious guy.

[Unknown]

He likes to collect a lot of different kinds of knowledge, all of this stuff.

[David McCloskey]

Also, this kind of search for toxins.

[Unknown]

And drug is right up his alley, right, As a biochemist. So he is like, nerding out on this stuff, right?

[David McCloskey]

And I think even if there is a sort of loose connection to the world of covert operations or any actual practical intelligence value, he's got the COVID from Alan Dulles. He's running this chemical division inside the technical services staff. He is after this stuff and Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

As they go through this progression. Thanks.

[David McCloskey]

What about lsd? Now, LSD is going to be the official drug of this series on the.

[Unknown]

Rest Is Classified podcast, because this is.

[David McCloskey]

The one, I think, more than any, that absolutely fascinates and bewitches Sidney Gottlieb.

[Gordon Carrera]

And we should say it's a synthetic.

[Unknown]

Drug and it's just been developed a.

[Gordon Carrera]

Few years earlier, hasn't it, in Switzerland.

[Unknown]

By a chemist as a new stimulant. So it's not created by the CIA.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I guess it's not very well.

[Unknown]

Known at this point.

[David McCloskey]

The Office of Strategic Services, the CIA.

[Unknown]

Forerunner, their R and D branch, had.

[David McCloskey]

Been aware of LSD during the Second World War. This is actually created in Switzerland, in basel, Switzerland, in 1943 by a research.

[Unknown]

Chemist named Dr. Albert Hoffman.

[David McCloskey]

It's the 25th in a series of lysergic acid diethylamides. So that's where the LSD comes from. It's known as LSD25. Dr. Hoffman is the first person to ever take a, quote, inner voyage, which is what they called an acid trip at the time.

[Unknown]

And he does so in the spring of 1943.

[David McCloskey]

Now, LSD for you chemistry nerds listening to the rest is classified. It's an enzyme that's sort of synthesized off of an enzyme that is found in the ergot fungus, which is a fungus that grows on rye and on grains. It is been recognized for centuries as kind of having therapeutic possibilities to it. But it can also cause hallucinations.

[Unknown]

And a case that actually come to.

[David McCloskey]

The CIA's attention in 1951 when basically an entire town in France ate bread, or the vast majority of the town had eaten bread contaminated with the ergot fungus and went bananas.

[Unknown]

The village essentially went on a trip. Like one man jumped into the river.

[David McCloskey]

Because he thought snakes were eating him alive. A number of people actually died in the madness. The CIA has found this out. And of course, in the very conspiratorial, borderline psychotic, you know, sort of geopolitics of the early 1950s, the CIA wonders, well, what if the Soviets had that.

[Unknown]

Power and could weaponize it?

[David McCloskey]

You could make entire populations go insane. So the CIA, Gottlieb, they get a batch of LSD from Sandoz, which is the pharmaceutical company in Switzerland that has developed lsd. And the setup here, from Gottlieb standpoint and from the standpoint of other CIA men in the early 50s, is that.

[Unknown]

LSD is a very attractive substance because.

[David McCloskey]

You don't need hardly any to create a massive reaction in a human being.

[Unknown]

A heavy dose of LSD would rest on the head of a pin.

[David McCloskey]

And even small doses can produce kind of mental derangement. So it's got these intriguing kind of clandestine possibilities, right?

[Unknown]

Could you use it to control somebody? Could you use it to elicit information, to discredit someone, to incapacitate them?

[David McCloskey]

And one CIA officer who was involved in this effort at the time remembers. You know, we had thought at first.

[Unknown]

That this was the secret that was going to unlock the universe. That is how much potential they thought it had.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And of course, Sidney gottlieb being a kind of practical man, a hands on scientist, not just a bureaucratic manager. He, he dives straight in, doesn't he?

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, he tries it, he tries it.

[Unknown]

Himself later he says he used it.

[Gordon Carrera]

More than 200 times.

[Unknown]

So it's not just a one off. I mean he really is experimenting on himself in terms of how it works.

[David McCloskey]

In a kind of early book on this time, they note that basically the way you'd think about this is they were running kind of ballistics on themselves. I mean they were testing these drugs like they were weapons. And Gottlieb has described his inner voyage and he said I happen to experience.

[Unknown]

An out of body ness, a feeling as though I am in a kind of transparent sausage skin that covers my whole body.

[David McCloskey]

And it is shimmering and I have a sense of well being and euphoria.

[Unknown]

For most of the next hour or.

[David McCloskey]

Two and then it gradually subsides.

[Unknown]

I mean, sorry, just the idea of.

[Gordon Carrera]

Being in a transparent sausage skin is.

[Unknown]

Not, that's not a sensation that I actually would want to try. That's not selling it to me I'm afraid having never done it, I'm not enticed to try it after hearing that description from Deer Sid.

[David McCloskey]

Well, here's why I think it's creates such possibilities in the minds of a guy like Gottlieb is that when you.

[Unknown]

Read accounts of people who have taken.

[David McCloskey]

Lsd, I think it is unpredictable exactly how that trip goes. But you see basic concepts like time, space, color, light, feelings like happiness, paranoia, good, evil, all these things can get reshaped in the middle of one of these inner voyages or, or acid trips. And that power to deal with fundamental concepts that order our lives, I think is what is so attractive about the.

[Unknown]

Drug to Sidney Gottlieb.

[David McCloskey]

And of course because of this power, the first thing you do is you start testing it on your, your friends and colleagues, right? So they, they begin testing it. The first volunteers to actually take it. Because again the CIA has his batch. They're scientists at Dietrich, they are Gottlieb's CIA colleagues. Later agency trainees will be given LSD without forewarning and, and things as you read Gordon in the quote, to open this kind of, they get out of hand relatively quickly. I mean it wasn't unusual for the TSS staff to spike the coffee with lsd.

[Unknown]

On one occasion an unwitting victim, a.

[David McCloskey]

CIA officer, drank the coffee and couldn't pull himself together. Is the sort of write up. Left the office and walked across a bridge over the Potomac and At this.

[Unknown]

Time, the TSS staff, they're not out at Langley, they're actually at an office.

[David McCloskey]

Inside Washington, D.C. and the guy is just, you know, bewildered. On this bridge, every time a car passes, he gets extremely frightened, just kind of huddles down.

[Unknown]

He's absolutely terrified out on this bridge.

[David McCloskey]

Gottlieb himself, I guess, is so notorious for these LSD experiments that he liked.

[Unknown]

To tell a story about a time that he was on a plane flying.

[David McCloskey]

Back to D.C. and he gets up to get a martini from the stewardess, which, I mean, also we should note. I mean, this.

[Unknown]

This era of air travel sounds kind.

[David McCloskey]

Of nice here because you just like.

[Unknown]

Would get up and go to the.

[David McCloskey]

Galley and someone fixes you a martini. So he walks back to his seat and someone. Someone asks him, is that LSD you're drinking?

[Unknown]

And he looks over at the guy and it's Alan Dulles sitting there on.

[David McCloskey]

The plane, just assuming that he's on lsd. So things had gotten so out of hand that by the holidays of 1954, the CIA's Office of Security circulates a memo warning that LSD could produce serious insanity for long periods and that it.

[Unknown]

Would not recommend testing in the Christmas punch bowls usually present at Christmas office parties.

That is quite a Christmas office party, I don't think. I've not been to one where they're putting LSD in the punch bowl, but I don't think we have punch bowls anymore.

[David McCloskey]

I would say the CIA holiday or Christmas parties had gotten more boring by.

[Unknown]

The time I arrived. I don't remember anything like this.

[David McCloskey]

They were all very sort of buttoned up. Bureaucratic affairs where, you know, having anything.

[Unknown]

More than a half glass of wine was generally frowned upon.

So I guess the key question, we've got this image now of CIA officers tripping in the office and out of the office sometimes. I guess the question is, is it actually working? Are they able to find out whether it actually helps with this crucial question of interrogating people and trying to break them down?

That seems like an irrelevant question at.

[David McCloskey]

This point in the story, Gordon. Everyone's enjoying a perfectly good experience with that question. I mean, again, I think the power of the drug is interesting to Gottlieb and initially promising. And they do conduct kind of mock.

[Unknown]

Interrogations in which CIA employees are given.

[David McCloskey]

LSD and then induced to violate oaths and promises. In. In one experiment, a military officer apparently swore he wouldn't reveal any secrets. He then is dosed with lsd. He reveals the secret, and then afterward had forgotten the entire episode. So there's like a few anecdotal incidents where I think Gottlieb looks at this and says, well, this could be fascinating for interrogations. This could be fascinating for use, you know, in sort of other intelligence applications. And Gottlieb is going to be fascinated by LSD and its applications in kind.

[Unknown]

Of the COVID world.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, there is a broader conversation inside this small community of people at.

[Unknown]

Dietrich and the CIA who are even.

[David McCloskey]

Aware of it, over what purpose could LSD serve?

[Unknown]

I mean, I think some see it as a weapon of war for incapacitating enemy populations.

[David McCloskey]

Kind of like what happened in that village in France.

[Unknown]

Albert Hoffman, the chemist who initially synthesized.

[David McCloskey]

It, saw it as a way to treat mental illness. And, you know, you can see a kind of thread running from that impulse to psychedelics today. Right. Gottlieb, though, saw it as a way to control people. It's really the kind of ultimate covert action weapon. Right? I mean, that was his vision for.

[Unknown]

Lsd, was that it would allow him not only a pathway into the human.

[David McCloskey]

Mind, but a mechanism to establish control over it.

[Unknown]

Because at first what they seem to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Have been looking for was a truth.

[Unknown]

Serum, effectively a way of breaking people.

[Gordon Carrera]

Down to see if they would be forced to answer questions truthfully. But it now seems like Gottlieb has.

[Unknown]

Actually got a kind of wider, more.

[Gordon Carrera]

Expansive idea of what you might be able to do with the human brain using some of the drugs like lsd. So we start to see it expanding, don't we, in terms of what his vision is, of what you could do potentially?

[Unknown]

That's right.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, some real bureaucratic creep here.

[Unknown]

Gordon, inside this program.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, also, one thing we should note is that Gottlieb is not a fan of committing much of this to writing.

[Unknown]

For obvious reasons.

[David McCloskey]

He really doesn't like to file reports. What he does insist on filing are.

[Unknown]

Expense reports and accounting.

[David McCloskey]

So much of what we have now come to learn about these programs have.

[Unknown]

Come from those types of reports, right?

[David McCloskey]

But the actual write ups of a lot of these incidents have been lost to us. So again, I mean, these early experiments, very mixed results. You know, some people take LSD and become docile and uninhibited. Other people become extremely paranoid. It seems pretty clear even early on that it's not a particularly reliable truth serum. But it does have, again, it's got that power and then it's colorless, odorless.

[Unknown]

Tasteless, you don't need much of it.

[David McCloskey]

So it's got the possibility for applications.

[Unknown]

In kind of clandestine intelligence operations.

[David McCloskey]

Now Gottlieb realizes that he's going to need some help in understanding the true possibilities of this drug. So he starts to bring doctors into his orbit. And this is a period in what is going to become MK Ultra where it's early startup days, right? So we're going to get to a point where there's much more kind of sprawling projects and bureaucracy. But at this point he's kind of starting to feel out allies in the.

[Unknown]

Research community and the medical community who can help him understand the impact of lsd.

[David McCloskey]

He reaches out to a doctor at the New York Psychiatric Institute who agrees to inject mescaline into one of his.

[Unknown]

Patients so its effects could be observed. He finds a 42 year old professional tennis player named Harold Blauer who had.

[David McCloskey]

Come to this doctor seeking treatment for.

[Unknown]

Depression following a divorce.

[David McCloskey]

And he's given a round of injections.

[Unknown]

Over a month's period. The mescaline derivative they were using had only been tested on mice. And then In January of 1953, he's given a dose that's 14 times greater.

[David McCloskey]

Than the previous ones and dies two hours later. And one of the medical assistants at the Psychiatric institute says, we didn't know.

[Unknown]

If it was dog piss or what.

[David McCloskey]

It was we were giving him.

[Gordon Carrera]

You'd think at this point, questions start to ask if a professional tennis player.

[Unknown]

Dies suddenly after being injected with something strange. But I guess people don't know what he's been injected with and people just accept it's some kind of potentially new drug.

[Gordon Carrera]

But it does seem bizarre that they can get away with doing this on ordinary people and not have questions asked.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, I think it's safe to say, and we'll see this in some of the later episodes, that the state of the profession of psychiatry in the, in the 1950s was really brutal. And the CIA is infinitely interested in sort of the frontiers of this profession right now. You might think that CIA leadership would start to look askance at all of this, right? I mean, you've got this tragic incident in New York which is already starting to kind of hint at both the use of these drugs in the States as sort of supplied or encouraged by the CIA, and just the complete unpredictability of what's going to happen once you start pushing this stuff out into the community.

[Unknown]

I mean, this guy ends up being.

[David McCloskey]

Killed by his psychiatrist. And so you'd think the CIA, Alan Dulles and others would sort of look at this and say, whoa, let's stop. But they totally align. No, no, no, no, and it'll be an interesting question throughout these episodes is who knows what about the extent of this research and what's really going on. But it is clear that Allen Dulles, who by this point is running the CIA, and later a guy named Richard Helms, who at this point is running.

[Unknown]

The Directorate of Operations.

[David McCloskey]

They are fully aligned with Sid Gottlieb.

[Unknown]

And his mission to understand if there is a way to establish control over the human mind.

[David McCloskey]

So this is a project the CIA, and again, it's not to sort of excuse it, but to explain it that at this period there is so much fear about what the Soviet Union might be doing on mind control that they do not feel that they could possibly stop this research.

[Unknown]

They're fully behind it. They want it to be done, although clearly they want it done quietly. But they're giving it the backing. They're giving it the financial backing and the kind of resources, more money, more budget, and crucially here, I guess a.

[Gordon Carrera]

New code name or cryptonym for the project.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. So in 1953, Dulles is running the CIA. Gottlieb gets a big bureaucratic boost. So he gets a budget of $300,000, not subject to financial controls, permission to launch kind of R and D work.

[Unknown]

And conduct experiments without the signing of the usual contracts or other written agreements. Maybe only a dozen people inside the CIA know what he's doing. And this program gets a new kryptonym.

[David McCloskey]

Surely not by accident. It's called MK ultra. We love a digraph.

[Unknown]

Gordon on the rest is classified.

[David McCloskey]

The MK digraph at the beginning of that means that it lives inside the.

[Unknown]

Tss, the technical services staff, and under MK Ultra. Sid Gottlieb is going to pursue his.

[David McCloskey]

Quest to understand and control the human mind.

[Unknown]

So let's take a break there and afterwards we'll come and see what dark.

[Gordon Carrera]

Places MK ULTRA takes us into.

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[Unknown]

Welcome back everybody to this trip into the world of CIA mind control, where the program has just got its new cryptonym MK Ultra.

[Gordon Carrera]

And Sidney Gottlieb is hard at work trying to master the human mind.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. And it turns out it takes a lot of work to master the human mind, Gordon. And it's impossible to do it without.

[Unknown]

A number of problems along the way.

[David McCloskey]

So Gottlieb, as MK Ultra gets rolling in 1953, is facing a bunch of big problems. One of them is that he has to run this research program in total secrecy. The second one, and this is where this story, I mean, you could argue that big pieces of this have already been pretty dark and it it's going to get darker, is that he needs human subjects to test these methods and drugs on another, I guess you could argue even bigger problem is that he's really got no idea how to research mind control, as we'll see. I mean, he's a biochemist, so he's a bit out of his depth here, or at least needs collaborators to bring more kind of experience and skills into MK Ultra. And of course, one of the first things you do, Gordon, when you set up a mind control program, is you set up a safe house in a major US city where people will unwittingly be given drinks laced with LSD and other drugs.

[Unknown]

That's step one, mind control 101. And of course, where else do you.

[Gordon Carrera]

Pick but New York City?

[Unknown]

And where else but Greenwich Village? New York city.

[David McCloskey]

That's right, 81 Bedford street is the CIA funded safe house in New York that is going to be stood up as part of the early days of MK Ultra. Now, the gentleman, and I use that word loosely, who Gottlieb hires to run this part of the operation is a.

[Unknown]

Guy named George Hunter White.

[David McCloskey]

He is a former narcotics detective who's also a user. He's a sadomasochist and frequenter of prostitutes. He's apparently got a big high heel fetish.

[Unknown]

He consumes a full bottle of gin.

[David McCloskey]

At dinner, he's always armed, carrying a.

[Unknown]

Weapon, and he owns a pet canary to whom he was deeply attached.

[David McCloskey]

And if after I've said all that you are not interested in George Hunter White, you have something wrong with you. Because this man is a villainous and.

[Unknown]

Colorful character who is going to reappear.

[David McCloskey]

I will say, in later episodes on this series.

[Unknown]

I mean, you couldn't almost pick a more darker caricature of someone, like from a kind of film noir of the late forties or early fifties of the kind of the bad guy or the.

[Gordon Carrera]

Thug, not the boss, but the kind.

[Unknown]

Of thug employed to kind of beat people up. I mean, that's what George Hunter White is. And also a former employee of the oss, the forerunner of the CIA during the war. You seem to have neglected that. That link when describing his general villain.

[David McCloskey]

I was gonna get there. I was gonna get there, Gordon. I just didn't include it in his initial bio, so. That's right. He was an OSS man during the war. And he had trained many of the OSS cadres at this school for mayhem and murder in Ontario. And what that means is that a lot of these senior people at the.

[Unknown]

CIA in the 1950s who'd come out.

[David McCloskey]

Of the OSS had been trained at this school by George Hunter White. So he's in this kind of orbit.

[Unknown]

Right, which is how Gottlieb ends up finding him.

[David McCloskey]

Now, George Hunter White had this bizarre.

[Unknown]

Resume since the end of the Second World War. So he had led anti narcotics campaigns in New York.

[David McCloskey]

He'd actually been on Joe McCarthy's committee.

[Unknown]

Investigating communist influence in the State Department.

[David McCloskey]

He had this kind of rich pool of potential subjects for drug experiments in New York because he had been a narcotics detective there. He's actually still working at the Federal Narcotics Bureau in New York when he gets hired to be an MK Ultra.

[Unknown]

Consultant by Sidney Gottlieb.

[David McCloskey]

And George Hunter Wyatt is a very.

[Unknown]

Violent and rough guy who lives on the edges of society. He is a total extremist in his appetites and consumptions.

[David McCloskey]

And he knows the drug scene really well.

[Unknown]

So he's perfectly qualified.

[David McCloskey]

So he's perfect for this work. It did take almost a year to get White's security clearance approved.

[Unknown]

How do you get a security clearance? I mean, given what you said about him. The drink, the prostitutes, the weird predilections. I mean. And yet he still gets a security clearance.

[David McCloskey]

It's all about who you know. So White and his second wife, Albertine, they throw wild sex and drug parties in New York.

[Unknown]

They drug their friends and unwitting subjects. So basically, the CIA's kind of subcontracted out the management of a drug house and brothel.

[David McCloskey]

So the Bedford street apartment is a CIA safe house in New York where George Hunter White is luring people. Oftentimes, he's actually using kind of like a cover as a bohemian artist in.

[Unknown]

Greenwich Village to lure people there for.

[David McCloskey]

Parties, give them drinks laced with drugs, and basically watch them as they react to them.

[Unknown]

Cause he's got two adjoining apartments, I think, and he's got surveillance equipment in one which allows him to kind of observe through mirrors what's happening in the other, which, frankly, sounds more perverted than scientific and sounds like he's, you know, following his general slightly deranged desires. And Gottlieb has given him an excuse and probably lots of money to be able to do that.

The perverse desires are the driving factor here for George Hunter White.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, he's not interested in the.

[Unknown]

Scientific applications of any of this and.

[David McCloskey]

Is just a sicko who's been handed some cash from Sidney Gottlieb and what seems like kind of a blank check.

[Unknown]

To commit a whole bunch of crimes in New York.

[David McCloskey]

So this is kind of one early prototype for what will become a more sprawling effort on the west coast as part of MK Ultra, which we're going to cover in a later episode in the series. But it starts in New York in this kind of early days of MK Ultra, where Gottlieb is trying to solve.

[Unknown]

A fundamental problem he has, which is he thinks he's got a super drug.

[David McCloskey]

In lsd, but he needs people to test it on.

[Unknown]

He can't just test it inside the CIA.

[David McCloskey]

He's kind of got to do it.

[Unknown]

Out in the wild.

[David McCloskey]

Now, one of the problems that he will have with LSD is he's got a supply problem, Gordon, because Sandoz, the Swiss company that holds the patent, they haven't actually made that much of it.

[Unknown]

And they are the only company in.

[David McCloskey]

The world in the early 1950s that knows how to make this stuff, how to synthesize LSD from that fungus.

[Unknown]

And in the early 50s, the CIA.

[David McCloskey]

Starts to worry that Sandoz is selling.

[Unknown]

LSD to the Soviet Union.

[David McCloskey]

Now, those intelligence reports later turn out to be false, but what happens is.

[Unknown]

That in 53, just as MK Ultra.

[David McCloskey]

Is starting up, a CIA officer is dispatched to Switzerland and reports back that.

[Unknown]

Sandoz had 10 kg of LSD on.

Hand, which is a crazy amount given that enough to put on a pinhead is enough to get one person on a trip. This is crazy amounts.

[David McCloskey]

10 kg is a fantastically gigantic amount of LSD. I mean, when you're talking about doses.

[Unknown]

Of LSD, you're speaking in terms of micrograms. In most cases, micrograms, not milligrams, micrograms.

[David McCloskey]

Now, dulles, Allen Dulles, CIA director, approves.

[Unknown]

The expenditure of $240,000 to buy what.

[David McCloskey]

He thinks at the time is the world's entire supply of lsd because he wants to make sure the Soviet Union doesn't get it. But the guys sent to pick it up quickly discovered that their colleague had confused kilograms with grams. But your metric system is sort of, you know, it's opaque, Gordon, to us Americans, and we couldn't possibly understand its fin points.

[Unknown]

Sandoz had actually manufactured a total of less than 40 grams, of which 10 were still in stock.

[David McCloskey]

So the CIA buys all of that. So the CIA has a supply problem because Gottlieb, he's only got 10 grams of this stuff, right? So Gottlieb creates a sub project under MK Ultra where he pays scientists at.

[Unknown]

The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to break.

[David McCloskey]

The chemical code in LSD and basically manufacture a knockoff of LSD in the States to solve his supply problem.

[Unknown]

We've gone Breaking Bad pretty quickly. We've gone from Manchurian Candidate to Breaking Bad here.

[David McCloskey]

Listeners to our pod will know that.

[Unknown]

We enjoy a Breaking Bad reference on the show.

[David McCloskey]

And I think what we'll see here as we get into this is that the CIA basically becomes the Heisenberg of LSD as we get going into the 1950s. So under Gottlieb, I mentioned the word sub project a second ago with respect to Eli Lilly. And under Gottlieb, MK ULTRA becomes a sprawling network of these sub projects.

[Unknown]

Each is kind of aimed at a different set of questions or a different.

[David McCloskey]

Avenue into the human psyche. Now, one of those, we talked about it earlier was hypnosis, Right.

[Unknown]

Gottlieb continues to be fascinated with it because he's sort of endlessly curious. What are the intelligence applications of hypnosis?

[David McCloskey]

There's actually an MKUltra sub project run through the University of Minnesota, conducting a series of hypnosis experiments on about 100 subjects that look at anxiety, recalling complex.

[Unknown]

Information and polygraph response. Under hypnosis, could you hypnotize someone so.

[David McCloskey]

That they would be able to pass a polygraph? Now, another angle on this is magic. So Sidney Gottlieb goes out and finds a very famous stage magician named John.

[Unknown]

Mulholland, who is a protege of Harry.

[David McCloskey]

Houdini and convinces Mulholland, Mullen actually, I.

[Unknown]

Think, is quite excited to participate in.

[David McCloskey]

This, to write a manual distilling insights.

[Unknown]

From the world of magic to covert operations.

[David McCloskey]

I have a copy at home and it's been published.

[Unknown]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

The title, is it the CIA Manual of Trickery and Inception?

[Unknown]

Yeah, I got a copy at home. I use it all the time when I'm doing my magic tricks. That's right. I'm so interested in the CIA magic and British intelligence. Magic.

[Gordon Carrera]

Magic.

[Unknown]

I've insisted we leave it there and we do some episodes on it at a later date because I just think it's a great topic how they start employing these magicians. So sorry I've stopped you covering it.

[David McCloskey]

Now, listeners will be, of course, dismayed to learn that I initially had, like.

[Unknown]

A page of stuff in here on.

[David McCloskey]

Magic and different magic tricks that John Mulholland taught CIA officers how to perform. And Gordon Carrera struck all of it. So send your complaints to Gordon. And of course, you know, inside this network of sub projects, it all goes back to L D, doesn't it, Gordon? And we should note here for our listeners that this part of it does start to get, I think, even maybe.

[Unknown]

Is it possible, Gordon, to get darker.

[David McCloskey]

Than where we've already been, Weirder and darker?

[Unknown]

And I think, yeah, people should be prepared for that if they're listening, I think.

[David McCloskey]

Because what Gottlieb wants to know, he wants to answer questions like how much.

[Unknown]

LSD can a human take? Can you blast away someone's consciousness and.

[David McCloskey]

Leave a void into which new impulses or ideas or a new personality could be implanted?

[Unknown]

And Gottlieb begins to build a more structured web of contractors and subcontractors to.

[David McCloskey]

Conduct this research because it's not being.

[Unknown]

Conducted inside the CIA itself. He's writing the checks and giving the LSD supply and writing the questions and.

[David McCloskey]

Getting others to do the research.

[Unknown]

And that's what I find really interesting about this is it's not being done in house, in some black site of the CIA, but it's actually academics, doctors.

[Gordon Carrera]

People associated with hospitals and universities who.

[Unknown]

Are actually going to do the darker experiments, but just secretly funded by the CIA and feeding the results back to them. Which almost to me feels darker than if it had been done in house somehow.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, it's almost more manipulative.

[David McCloskey]

Well, yeah, because I guess the funding.

[Unknown]

For this and the drugs and kind.

[David McCloskey]

Of the impulse for it comes from the CIA, but it's filtered through what seem to be, you know, very sort.

[Unknown]

Of upstanding rehabilitation centers and psychiatric institutes and research institutions.

[David McCloskey]

One of them is the Addiction Research center in Lexington, Kentucky, is a guy named Dr. Harris Isbell.

[Unknown]

It's officially a hospital, but it functions like a prison. The Bureau of Prisons actually co administers.

[David McCloskey]

It and it's nicknamed the Narcotic Farm. Now, people there are essentially inmates at this facility, right? And many are black.

[Unknown]

Most are on the margins of society. And Isbel had conducted truth serum research for the Office of Naval Research during the war. He knew the CIA was looking into it, so he had actually volunteered.

[David McCloskey]

He wrote the CIA saying he wanted to participate or to help in sort.

[Unknown]

Of experiments on truth serum research. And so Gottlieb visits him. They strike a deal.

[David McCloskey]

Gottlieb will give him money, give him.

[Unknown]

Lsd, because LSD at this Point in.

[David McCloskey]

Time is not easy to get in, you know, usable quantities or at all. And so ISBEL is gonna design and conduct the experiments, provide subjects, and then file reports to Gottlieb and his staff. And Gottlieb basically sends a variety of compounds down there, opiates, marijuana, barbiturates, tranquilizers. A lot of junkies in the Lexington area, of course, become regular volunteers because.

[Unknown]

They can basically show up at this.

[David McCloskey]

Place and participate in the research.

[Unknown]

Some were even compensated.

[David McCloskey]

So they'd be given preferential treatment inside the system or a little bit of.

[Unknown]

Money to participate in these experiments.

[David McCloskey]

It does seem though that some inmates.

[Unknown]

Or patients were almost certainly dosed unwittingly in these experiments.

[David McCloskey]

And so all of this paper, much.

[Unknown]

Of which has, has been destroyed, is.

[David McCloskey]

Going back to Gottlieb and the CIA. Now, Isbel's MK Ultra contracts included sub project 73, which was to test whether.

[Unknown]

LSD, mescaline or other drugs could make.

[David McCloskey]

People more susceptible to hypnosis.

[Unknown]

The drug experiments that Isabel did were extremely intense. So in one case gave a test subject 532 micrograms of LSD, which is maybe seven times a typical dose.

[David McCloskey]

And in one case, he dosed someone.

[Unknown]

With LSD for 77 days straight.

[David McCloskey]

So just, I mean, really stuff where you'd say, this is abuse, you're abusing somebody with a drug. You, you do not understand. How could anyone, even if they're raising their hand and saying, I want to.

[Unknown]

Participate in this, how can someone really even know what they're consenting to?

And I mean, there's so many dark stories. I mean, there's one of a former state senator from Georgia who got addicted to Demerol and is been tested on with LSD and becomes really mentally damaged.

[Gordon Carrera]

And it seems like there's just awful.

[Unknown]

Story after awful story about the long.

[Gordon Carrera]

Term effects some of these people who experimented on feel, which go on for, you know, for decades actually in many cases.

[Unknown]

And this isn't the only one of the kind of projects either.

[David McCloskey]

No, I mean, another notable victim in this period is the kind of notorious gangster Whitey Bulger, who was one of these subjects. So Gottlieb had arranged a similar setup.

[Unknown]

To the one in Kentucky at Emory.

[David McCloskey]

University or through Emory University in Atlanta. And Whitey Bulger ends up kind of.

[Unknown]

Filtering in as one of the subjects for this LSD research. So he was given LSD every day for 15 months.

[David McCloskey]

And in a notebook he wrote that.

[Unknown]

After he was released he had nightmares.

[David McCloskey]

Horrible LSD experiences, followed by thoughts of Suicide and deep depression.

[Unknown]

And he didn't want to tell any of the medical attendants about hearing voices or what he would describe as movement.

[David McCloskey]

Of the calendar in his cell because he thought if he did that he'd be committed for life and never see the outside world again. And he, of course, is a gangster.

[Unknown]

But he went on to serve two consecutive life sentences for 11 murders.

[David McCloskey]

So you kind of get this sense of there are people for whom they.

[Unknown]

Come into contact with these programs and they're forever changed.

[David McCloskey]

Now, some of these sub projects were extremely bizarre. So one of them is MK Ultra sub project 43. The idea here was to conduct experiments on suggestibility and ways to induce disassociative states. And so what kind of experiment do.

[Unknown]

You design to answer those questions?

[David McCloskey]

Gordon? Well, you go down to Oklahoma City where In the early 60s, a CIA psychiatrist, a guy who actually resembles Santa Claus, got approvals from the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo.

[Unknown]

And he shot a dart containing 300,000 micrograms of LSD into a 7,000 pound bull elephant named Tusko.

[David McCloskey]

And so the psychiatrist was apparently trying.

[Unknown]

To induce a state of heightened aggression.

[David McCloskey]

And strong sexual desire in the elephant. The story does not end well for Tusko.

[Unknown]

Five minutes later, after the injection, according.

[David McCloskey]

To the report, the elephant, quote, trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily onto his right side, defecated and went into status epilepticus. He died an hour and 40 minutes later. The conclusion of the CIA report says.

[Unknown]

It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to lsd.

[David McCloskey]

And the CIA, unbeknownst to the zoo, the zoo doesn't know where the money is coming from. But through the psychiatrist, the CIA compensates the zoo for the loss of Tusco.

[Unknown]

I hope they didn't do this like in the zoo with like kids watching, because I just have this image of poor old Tusko when I read this.

The first time, that that is the.

[David McCloskey]

Image I had was like Tusko was just there in his enclosure and a guy in a pith helmet shoots him with a dart. This is where I think you can see sort of the imprint of Sidney Gottlieb's curiosity and frankly just the curiosity of so many other psychiatrists and researchers.

[Unknown]

And scientists who were involved in this.

[David McCloskey]

Work expressed, right, because we have gotten to a point in the story where the CIA is funding and encouraging the.

[Unknown]

Injection of LSD into elephants, right?

[David McCloskey]

I mean, and even these stories, they get even weird. I mean, sub project 70 involved catching.

[Unknown]

Ticks and milking their salivary glands for a neurotropic toxic substance. Gottlieb Seems to have dispatched someone to.

[David McCloskey]

Collect a crocodile from Central Africa so.

[Unknown]

Its gallbladder could be harvested and studied for its medicinal qualities.

[David McCloskey]

Gottlieb is gonna hire psychiatrists as well, right? So, hires a superintendent of Boston Psychopathic hospital to run LSD experiments. He gives $85,000 to a new York allergist who's one of the first pioneers of LSD in the States, gives it to guests at his Long island home. There's just this, like, litany of crazy stories, dark stories, as Gottlieb starts to really push his research agenda out into kind of the mainstream of US Academia, psychiatric health and kind of research in.

[Unknown]

The middle of the 50s.

Do we sense that Gottlieb has any.

[Gordon Carrera]

Doubts, any kind of questions in his.

[Unknown]

Mind about these crazy things he's encouraging? Or is he just the kind of archetypal mad scientist who's suddenly been given license to do whatever he wants on whoever he wants? And that's great, and who cares about people?

It's going to be an interesting question.

[David McCloskey]

Throughout many of these kind of episodes in this series. Like, how much did Gottlieb know? Were there pieces of it that he kind of maybe knew what was going on in concept, but not in detail? He's probably aware that, you know, poor Tusko got shot. But how aware is he of what's going on at the, you know, Addiction.

[Unknown]

Research center in Kentucky?

[David McCloskey]

Here's what I think. I think he's aware, but I think he's distant.

[Unknown]

He's so distant from it because he's.

[David McCloskey]

Not participating in these experiments.

[Unknown]

I think he's distant enough from it.

[David McCloskey]

That he can kind of deal with it in a cold way, like a researcher, and not have to encounter the human face of it in this period.

[Unknown]

And probably justify it as back to where we started. The Soviets are doing this, and it's the Cold War, and if we don't do it, they will and use it against us. So that justifies this pretty dark, sometimes.

[Gordon Carrera]

Quite depraved stuff that's going on in his name.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, later on in his life, Gottlieb will come to express some, I think, guilt about MKULTRA and about what.

[Unknown]

Was done under the program. But we really, in this period, don't.

[David McCloskey]

Have a record of his thoughts about this type of work in the moment. You know, we know that at home he had a relatively happy home life. He and his wife would go out folk dancing. He was a big folk dancing enthusiast. They'd buy the right costumes, and he'd.

[Unknown]

Come home and teach his wife after.

[David McCloskey]

Going out on trips. So you kind of get this sense of a guy who I think was able to compartmentalize pretty easily. And we should also say that Gottlieb is starting to take on more and more responsibility inside the technical services staff. And so mind control, or MK Ultra, is probably only one thing on his calendar every week. So, you know, to paint a picture of this guy as kind of this mad scientist who's out killing elephants and.

[Unknown]

You know, force feeding LSD to inmates.

[David McCloskey]

All of that stuff, of course, happens.

[Unknown]

Underneath his program, but I think he's.

[David McCloskey]

Interacting with a lot of this stuff at arm's length. He's dealing with a lot more on his plate and. And I think he's able to compartmentalize, you know, everything really easily.

[Unknown]

And so there with this sprawling MK.

[Gordon Carrera]

Ultra program, with all these sub projects.

[Unknown]

All over the place, doing crazy things with elephants and psychiatric hospitals. So let's stop, and next time when we come back, we'll look at perhaps the most dark episode of MK Ultra. One in which a CIA officer themselves pays a terrible price for being experimented on. As Gottlieb searches for what LSD can do and whether it could really deliver mind control.

[David McCloskey]

See you next time.